A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw (heaven official's blessing novel english txt) 📕

Martinez pulled out a third picture and held it up. “The rest were more or less variations on this theme.” The photograph showed a crowded restaurant full of smoke and people laughing and drinking. On one side the corner of a stage was visible, and just beside it were Griffin and Galloway talking cozily together, holding cigarettes and martini glasses. “It’s how I realized what must have happened to my notes on the case. Galloway was protecting Griffin, in exchange for, I’m not sure what, but we’re bound to find out. You know, I had no idea he was married. Galloway knew though. He sure wasn’t going to tell me. And when the Renwicks turned out to be a perfect fit for the crime, he must have thought he could keep Griffin out of it.”

He reached for a file and now placed two pieces of paper in front of Lane and one in front of Darling. “These are your statements from yesterday. Could you just read them and sign there at the bottom? Let me know if anything needs to be changed.”

This task accomplished, Martinez wished them the very best of luck, and Lane and Darling made their way into the street. It was sunny, but significantly cooler temperatures in the shade spoke of the coming winter.

“I really would like to buy a shawl I saw. I know where the shop is. Do you mind?”

“I don’t, but I’m going with you,” Darling said firmly.

They had packed everything they could and were about to head to the pool for a last swim when there was a tentative knock at the door. Lane went to open it and found Rex Holden on the welcome mat.

“Mr. Holden, how lovely to see you. I thought you’d packed up and gone home. Do come in. We’re just packing ourselves. We’re off tomorrow.”

Holden took off his hat and held it in his hands. “I’ll surprise you I think, but I wanted to thank you. Meg has come back to me.”

Lane looked at him with gratifying surprise. She was certain Meg would have been charged with something. Perhaps she had been freed in exchange for information about Griffin. “Goodness. That’s good news? I’m sorry about sounding doubtful, but I’d have thought perhaps you felt well rid of her.”

Holden smiled sheepishly. “I know now what was going on. I could have filed charges of some sort against her, but she called me from the police station and asked to meet me. She said she was going to get on the Greyhound bus, and then changed her mind. She confessed to me all about the scheme. It was a bit humbling, really.”

“But you’ve taken her back?”

“Well, that’s why I’ve come. She told me how you two had made an escape down the hill and she said something you did made her change her mind. No, no. I don’t need to know what it is. But you know, at heart she’s good, and I think she genuinely cares for me. I don’t know. I’m not getting any younger, and she makes me happy. I imagine the law will be quite forgiving now she’s talked about James Griffin’s activities. They only asked that she be prepared to appear at his trial to testify, and then they’ll let her go. She’ll get a divorce and we’ll get married, legally this time.”

Lane smiled. “I think you’re right about her. And she’s terribly brave. She rescued me when she didn’t have to, and she was very plucky clattering around in the desert in the middle of the night. And you know, she stood up to Griffin’s quite ferocious gunman when she saw him shoot me. And she did say she cares for you. I told her to leave her purse behind when we were running away, but she wouldn’t hear of it. You gave it to her, she said.”

“That poor kiddie,” Ames said, surveying the collection of things taken from the Watts house. “Look at this stuff. I don’t understand how a mother could carry on like this. Did she really think she’d get away with it? That she and Sadie would live happily ever after?”

Terrell picked up the blond wig and then put it back down next to the poison Amy Watts had used to kill her husband. “I don’t really understand it either. I wonder if she was just going along, doing one thing at a time, and not thinking about the possible consequences. She finds that little purse of Miss Van Eyck’s carefully saved in the shed. She sees a letter from an ex-cop that threatens to expose her husband’s ‘involvement’ with Tina if he ever contacts him again. She doesn’t know about the background of the rape. She just thinks he’s really going to run away with Miss Van Eyck. She conceives somehow the idea that she can kill him and blame Miss Van Eyck, and as she goes along, each step seems to go without a hitch. If she’d managed to kill Miss Van Eyck as well, she probably would have assumed her troubles would be at an end.”

Ames shuddered involuntarily. “It’s no wonder he was jammed against the driver-side door like that—he was trying to get away. Miss Van Eyck could so easily have been next, though that handkerchief trick would have been much harder to pull off if she wasn’t behind Tina the way she had been behind her husband. I bet she had her gun when she killed her husband as well. Perhaps made herself known, told him she had a gun, and he’d better do what she wanted. Made him drive to the ferry; he tried to shake her by driving towards the water, but she made him turn and then she applied the cloth while the car was still moving. I suppose she was squeamish about shooting and thought she could use the same method